Jennifer Lynch’s Chained, which came out in 2012, received a mostly positive response at the time of its release, with special praise for its actors’ performances. However, there was some contention over its horror elements and its ending being open to interpretation.
Chained is a movie about a cab driver named Bob who abducts a mother and child and keeps the child chained to a wall after killing his mother. Bob then names the child Rabbit and begins to raise him as his own.
Once Rabbit becomes a teenager, Bob tries to get Rabbit to teach himself human anatomy. By now, Rabbit is burying the bodies of Bob’s victims but Bob intends to go one step further by turning Rabbit into a serial killer like him.
To complete Rabbit’s transformation into a serial killer, Bob makes him choose a victim from a yearbook. Rabbit initially refuses but eventually picks a girl named Angie. Bob then abducts Angie and leaves her in a room with Rabbit so he can kill her.
Rabbit obviously doesn’t want to murder the girl and once he starts bonding with her, the task becomes more difficult. Finally when Bob barges into the room, Rabbit quickly stabs her in the stomach and then takes her to the room containing the other dead bodies.
When Bob takes Rabbit in his cab to find their next victim, he notices the word ‘help’ written on the side of the cab. He then realises that Rabbit stabbed Angie in a non-lethal spot, meaning that she’s still alive. So, Bob knocks Rabbit unconscious and goes back to the room where Angie is hiding.
Bob tries to kill Angie but she manages to cut off his Achilles tendon in the struggle. Rabbit then regains consciousness and comes to Angie’s rescue. At the end of Chained, Rabbit kills Bob and buries him next to his other victims.
Rabbit tracks down his father
After Rabbit kills Bob, he tracks down his father, Brad, and finds him living with his new wife, Marie, and their son, Colin. Brad is excited to see Rabbit, and, in this scene, we learn that Rabbit’s real name is Tim. However, this isn’t the only piece of information revealed.
In a shocking turn of events, Rabbit says that he found a letter which revealed Bob to be Brad’s brother. Brad was the one who arranged Rabbit and his mother’s abduction so that he could get rid of them and start a new life.
Brad responds to this confrontation by violently attacking Rabbit. Marie intervenes but she also gets hurt in the process. Rabbit defends himself against his father by beating him to death.
After Marie urges Rabbit to leave, he finally does. Marie then calls the police to tell them that a burglar had killed her husband. It’s possible that Marie felt bad for Rabbit, given his circumstances, and hence wanted to prevent him from being sent to prison.
After all, Marie was a victim of Brad’s abuse too and Rabbit essentially saved her.
Is Angie still alive?
We never got proper confirmation of Angie’s death, but we know for sure that Rabbit doesn’t let her go after killing his uncle.
If Angie did escape, she would have reported Rabbit to the police and there’d be several officers and investigators on his tail. However, no such thing happens in the end.
Rabbit most likely killed Angie and buried her corpse in the grave he had earlier dug next to Bob’s.
When the credits start rolling, we hear a series of noises in the background – Rabbit grabs a bear from the fridge, cuts out what could possibly be a news clipping of Angie’s death, and leaves the house. He then enters the garage, gets into his uncle’s taxi and drives away.
After spending all those years watching his uncle, Rabbit himself becomes a serial killer. He has already murdered his father, uncle and potentially even Angie, and now he’s off to find more women to abduct and kill.
The ending of Chained may have been a bit rushed but it still made perfect sense and was well-fitted to the story.
About Chained
Chained is a 2012 Canadian psychological horror film directed by Jennifer Lynch. The film premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival and was later released direct-to-video in the United States by Anchor Bay Entertainment.
The cast of the movie includes Vincent D’Onofrio, Eamon Farren, Gina Phillips, Conor Leslie, Jake Weber, and Julia Ormond.
A serial killer named Bob kidnaps a boy, Tim, eventually making him his protégé. Tim has to make a life-and-death choice between following in the psychopath’s steps or breaking free from his clutches.
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